Want To Close More Sales? Don't Talk. Pay Attention!

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The only secret to closing more sales is to have more focus on your client.

People are always looking for ways to close the sale. Often, when you lose a sale, it has nothing to do with your ability to close. It has to do with focus!

Focusing on your potential client means that you are actively listening and that you personally care about your prospect. These things cannot be faked. You must truly want to listen and you must actually care about helping your prospect. That is the only secret to closing the sale.

The benefit of focus to the sales process is when people feel heard they will offer further information, their deepest objections, their wants and needs and they won’t shut down. Imagine how much more you can learn if you really pay attention. Think of what you could be missing. Think of the money you could be making.

Focusing on the prospect goes far beyond listening or the words coming out of your mouth. Your focus directly affects your body language, your tone, and your message. The fact is, that these are the three factors your potential clients use to determine if they like you and if your product can solve their problem.

"I think the one lesson I've learned is there is no substitute for paying attention." ~ Diane Sawyer

Your body language will show how focused you are on your potential client. Your prospects detect your body language even if they are not aware of it. There is no “secret” way to ensure that you have effective body language. When you are engaged in a conversation with a potential client and you remain focused, you will exhibit nothing but positive body language.

The same is true for your tone of voice. If you are listening with the intent to understand, instead of listening with the intent to respond, then that amount of personal attention will reflect in the tone of your voice. The tone of your voice, like your body language, plays a role in how well someone receives your message.

The content of your message will naturally be in-line with what the potential client would like to hear if you focus on the potential client and nothing else. When you are in-sync with your prospect, then your prospect will guide the conversation all the way to the commitment to buy.

To listen actively and thoroughly takes patience, hard work, concentration, the ability to interpret other people's ideas and then summarize them.

Strong salespeople focus on their clients. They also possess good active listening skills and can always convey, in their own words, precisely what their prospects have told them. If you truly want success in sales you must be able to do this too. Without exaggeration, this skill will lead to better credibility with your potential clients and ultimately to a more successful sales career.

In addition, active listening also requires the ability to identify nonverbal communications such as body language. Listening is both a complex process and a learned skill that requires an intellectual and emotional effort. 

Active listening is the ability to give your undivided attention in an effort to fully understand someone’s point of view. When TV newscaster Diane Sawyer was asked the secret to her success, she said, "I think the one lesson I've learned is there is no substitute for paying attention." 

Paying attention to what someone else is saying is a great way to make them feel heard.

It is unfortunate that when we listen to other people speaking, most of us without active listening skills, are too busy making assessments and forming opinions to actually understand what they are saying. If not that, we are thinking, “please hurry up” so we can take our turn to speak the thoughts we are so busy formulating.

“There are people who, instead of listening to what is being said to them, are already listening to what they are going to say themselves.” ~Albert Guinon

When you are actively listening you will notice that pause after the speaker finishes speaking. This pause allows you to process what you have just heard. Then, when you reflect back on what you heard or ask a clarifying question, the person you are speaking with will really know you were listening. Now that’s communicating!

To help you on your road to success here are 10 of my favorite tips.

• Focus on the person speaking instead of your own reactions.
• Let the speaker’s statement or conversation come to completion.
• Become the speaker as they are talking and imagine you are walking in their shoes.
• Listen with all your senses (even your gut!)
• Be mindful of the points the other person is making without judgment. Avoid making the speaker “right” or “wrong”.
• Ask questions actively to show your interest.
• Lean forward, or nod to offer encouragement and show your interest.
• Use facial expressions to show you are listening. Smile, move an eyebrow, look surprised or puzzled. You have 15 muscles in your face for expressions. Use them.
• Summarize what you hear.
• Don’t look bored when someone else is talking. Tapping fingers, humming to music, rolling eyes, fidgeting, are all inappropriate nonverbal forms of communications.

You could take all the books written about becoming a better salesperson and if you put them end-to-end they would probably reach to the moon and back. You would spend endless nights reading and pouring over this mountain of material. Well, you are very lucky that you happened upon this article because I am going to boil all that down, right here and right now. Want to be more successful in sales? Focus, pay attention and actively listen.

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